Yes.  Kudzu. The bane of gardeners and municipalities in the American south where this plant is an invasive weed, overtaking and consuming tracts of plants and trees in gardens, fields and on highways.

But in Japan, where this plant is native, it was used to make cloth–very often for elegant clothing–and is processed to make edible starch.As early at the 14th century, it has been recorded that kuzufu or kudzu cloth, was made in Kakegawa in Shizuoka Prefecture.  Kuzu fiber is flat and has a sheen; in this regard it resembles an elegant cousin to woven raffia.  The benefits of the cloth is that it held up well, didn’t soften and dried quickly.  It was used to make traveling capes and elegant hakama for aristocratic clients.

In these photos, above and below, I am hoping to show the quality of the kuzu fiber, which is very distinctive, mainly, as mentioned above, because is is very flat and does not appear to be spun.

Today I am showing a length of rustic, asa or bast fiber cloth, this one being woven from yarns taken from the inner bark of the linden tree, the cloth being called shinafu.Shinafu is a very rough cloth–it’s almost abrasive to the touch, the yarns being almost wiry.  The color of shinafu has a characteristically coppery sheen.In order to obtain raw materials for this kind of cloth, women would make many trips into the forest to harvest the linden tree’s inner bark, which would then be arduously processed, washed, dried, split and then plied: this transformation from tree bark to usable yarn was very time consuming and required more effort, time and skill that is imaginable.Shinafu is a marvelous looking cloth; although I am not totally sure of this, I believe it was rarely used for clothing as it was so rough to the touch and seems not to soften with age or wear.   Notice the surface texture of this cloth, which I am trying to show through these detail photos: the surface is a bit irregular and the cloth is very stiff.This particular length of shinafu is a very handsome example for its condition, its length and its fine color.